The Future of Driving

Ford CEO Mark Fields noted four trends for the auto industry’s future: Increasing urbanization, and its constituent clogging of roads; a growing global middle class; air quality, or what you could call a lack thereof in many parts of the world; and finally, changing consumer sentiment, with shifts in the global economy seeing youths, for example, have different buying patterns than their parents.

Ford CTO Raj Nair also talked about Ford’s initiatives around autonomous and assisted driving. The key enablers for this, he believes, are smart software development and improved sensor capabilities in cars. As Nair noted at a press dinner ahead of the keynote, he believes we will see autonomous vehicles on the road in at least some clearly defined locations within five years. He has no doubts that Ford will also offer an autonomous car in the future and the company already has prototypes of its autonomous cars on the road right now.